


The Mighty Handful

by gilded_iris



Series: Scream Hello [2]
Category: IT (1990), IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Alcoholism, Drug Use, F/M, Future Fic, Infidelity, It: Chapter 2, M/M, Macroverse, Past Child Abuse, References to the larger Stephen King universe, Repressed Memories, Smoke-hole, Suicide, Supernatural Elements, The Ritual of Chüd, Todash space, angst like woah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-04-27 10:51:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14423856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilded_iris/pseuds/gilded_iris
Summary: It didn't start with the beast awakening. It didn't start with the death of Adrian Mellon. It didn't start with the phone calls, not really. It started with Stanley Uris' bath.It's two years after the events of Scream Hello, and it's time for the Losers to return to Derry.





	1. Prologue: The Bath

**Author's Note:**

> Official sequel to Scream Hello!  
> This fic is basically going to be the "what comes next" from Scream Hello. In a lot of ways, it is also my take on what I want IT: Chapter Two to look like. This fic is in the movie verse with a few things added from the book (mainly the use of the smoke-hole and the Ritual of Chüd)  
> Unlike Scream Hello, this fic will focus on all the losers, not just Eddie and Richie. 
> 
> All trigger warnings will be kept in the end notes, so you can chose if you want to read them or not. I implore you to keep in the mind the nature of the source material. If you felt uncomfortable reading IT, chances are, this fic would make you feel uncomfortable too. Note: trigger warnings will often be spoilers.

 

# Prologue: The Bath

 

_"We must not look at goblin men,_

_We must not buy their fruit._

_Who knows upon what soil they fed_

_Their hungry, thirsty roots?"_

_-Christina Rossetti_

_"Goblin Market"_

 

_"Aah aah aah aah aah aah aah_

_Aah aah aah aah aah aah aah_

_Aaah aah aah aah."_

_–The Rolling Stones_

_"Miss You"_

 

_"Out of the Blue_

_And into the Black"_

_–Neil Young_

_"Hey, Hey, My, My"_

* * *

 

 

It didn't start with the beast awakening. It didn't start with the death of Adrian Mellon. It didn't start with the phone calls, not really. It started with Stanley Uris' bath.

 

* * *

 

 

May 28th, 2016

_Atlanta, Georgia_

"What do you want to do this weekend?" Patty asked, curling into Stan's side. It was a good night, but then again all nights with his wife were good ones for Stan. He kissed her forehead.

"Well I can think of a million things and not one of them involves leaving our bedroom."

"Yeah?" She laughed.

"Yeah. We can take all weekend long. We'll have to stock up on water and food, of course, because I'm pretty sure we'll work up an appetite. In fact, we could get an early start, you know."

Patty rolled her eyes. "You are an absolute Casanova!"

"Hey, I'll take it."

"Well then, Casanova, you're going to have to wait because the new episode of Modern Family comes on tonight and apparently tonight is going to be a Lily-heavy episode."

"About that…" Stan let his hand linger on her thigh and met her eyes.

"About what, Stanny?"

"Well, I've been thinking a lot. I know we've tried," he rubbed his palm across her ever-flat stomach, "but what if we adopted? I had lunch with my dad today and I told him what the doctor said to us and how hard we've tried and he read me something from the Talmud. I actually wrote it down." Stan's parents had moved to Atlanta shortly after they did, and it was only because of that fact that he and Patty stayed active in the Jewish community. In truth, the two had bonded over their rather secular views on Judaism – not that Donald Uris would ever know. So if Stan reached into his pocket and pulled out a neatly folded slip of paper with religious advice from his father, that damn well meant it was important. "'Whoever brings up an orphan in their home, it is as though they gave birth to him.' Patty, I want us to be parents. I don't care how we bring a baby into our home, I just want it to be ours."

Patty clutched his hands in hers and let a few tears drip down her cheeks. They glistened in the dim light of the television. There were moments like these in which Stan looked at his wife and could swear he could see all that was good in the universe in her eyes. He tore his hands away and wiped her tears. She gave him a beautiful little laugh.

"Do you want that too?" Stan asked, although he already knew the answer. Stan, it seemed, knew the answer to _everything._ In every moment of the trials and tribulations of adulthood, he'd been her rock, always standing there with a cool and confident smile just waiting for success. And so, success had found them. Stan was a partner at one of the highest earning accounting firms in the Southeast region and they lived in one of Atlanta's most affluent neighborhoods. Life was good. The only absence was an empty room upstairs that was just the perfect size for a nursery.

Then there was a crash.

"Oh my God, what was that?" Patty jolted from her spot on Stan's lap. "It came from the window." She pointed to the next room.

_"Stan?"_

"It's okay, babylove," Stan cooed, but it was too late. Patty's lower lip had already started to wobble. He swept her into his arms and pet her curls against the soft chambray of his shirt.

"I hate that stuff like that scares me… what if… what if it's another rock?" In the small house they'd lived in before they'd slipped into the six figure realm, they hadn't been as welcome as they were now that they had money. On their second night home after the honeymoon, a group of teenage boys threw rocks with swastikas painted on them through their bedroom window. Stan, so strong and brave, had chased them away and called the police. And yes indeedy, the'd  pressed charges. If Patty'd ever had any doubts about marrying Stan, they all evaporated that night when he'd put on his robe and swung his hips in that beautiful, near-cocky manner of his, and held Patty as the police took their report.

"Babylove, don't you worry. It wasn't a rock, I promise. Now you just sit here and get the T.V. on the right channel. I'll take care of whatever that was and then we can watch Modern Family, alright?" He deposited her on the couch and gave her another kiss for good measure. Then he left the room and went to the window.

_"Stan!"_

He'd been right. It wasn't a rock and the window hadn't even shattered, but there was a long fracture stretching like an old scar diagonal across the frame. That was not what disturbed Stan, it was the stiff bird in their flower box that caught his eye.

"Stan?" Patty called. "Stanny, what was it?"

Stan flexed his hands and cleared his throat. "Nothing, sweets. Just a bird flew into the window, that's all."

It wasn't just a bird, no. It was a collection of facts from a faraway, forgotten bird book. It was a _Black-Capped Chickadee. Poecile atricapillus. A common native bird of the East Coast. 8.5 inch wingspan. 1.5-1.8 year lifespan. Highly complex vocalizations. Found in the U.S. Northeast and Canada. State bird of Maine. Does not migrate._ Stan lifted the window as gently as he could manage without the cracked pane falling apart.

"Oh dear, is it dead?" Patty's voice rang from the other room. Somehow the damned little bird had found itself hundreds of miles away from home and in the heat of the Georgia summer. It had shattered its beak on the sash window of the Uris residence. Stan wanted to try and convince himself that it was a Carolina Chickadee, but he knew better. Stan picked the bird up with his bare hands and knew it's round, swollen belly and tail feathers made it a Black-Capped. An impossible bird. It writhed a bit in its hands making almost sob-like sounds, but it's beak was hopelessly broken in a way that even if it were to survive the shock, it would never be able to eat again. If he left the bird be, it would slowly starve to death in encroaching horror. Without looking, Stan snapped its neck in one swift, careful motion. Painless. _Better to burn out than to fade away._

_"Stan, please!"_

"Yes, Patty," he called. "It's dead."

And that's when the phone rang.

"Stanny, can you get that?" Patty said, bird already forgotten. _Burn out. Just like that._ "The show's just started and I don't want to miss it."

"Sure thing, Pats."

Stan grabbed the old landline and rested it between his cheek and shoulder, still balancing the bird in hand.

"Uris residence, who's calling?"

"Stan, it's Mike." Silence. "Mike Hanlon, from Derry."

There was something wrong.

"Oh? Oh yeah!" Stan cleared his throat. "Well I'll be damned. How are you?"

Something terribly wrong.

"How much do you remember about the summer of 1989?"

It was all terribly, terribly _wrong._

"Well, I don't know, Mike. Say, what's this about? Not that it isn't good to hear from an old friend, but my wife and I were just…" _Just what?_

"It's back."

The bird's head lolled to the side.

"Are… are you sure?"

An ant ran across its beady eye.

"Yes. Stan… two years ago, around this time of year, do you remember anything particularly odd happening?"

Stan rubbed at the edge of his forehead where beads of sweat were collecting.

"No, Mike. Nothing odd happens around here. You know, I live a very happy life."

Its claws were clenched in eternal terror.

"Do you remember the promise?"

Stan flexed his stiff hands around the bird's body.

"Sure. Sure I remember."

"Then you'll come?"

"Well… I can't promise. I mean, you've got understand I'm very busy…"

"People have already died."

"... and you know work is tough sometimes…"

"I've already called the others, they're on their way."

"... and my wife and I always have things going on…"

"Stan. You need to come."

"... I'm just so busy. You've got to know that, Mike. Mike, don't you know that?"

Mike knew. Stan knew Mike knew.

_"Stan, look at me. I know you see me."_

"I know."

_"Please say you see me."_

There'd been something in the corner of Stan's eye for a very long time now.

"Yeah. I'm sure you do. Listen, Mike, I'd love to come, but I'm just so goddamned busy!" A shrill, edging laughter came from somewhere in Stan's throat. "You know how it is!"

Something crooked.

"Stan, it's okay to be scared–"

"I'm not scared!" Stan's voice came out loud enough that Patty would've heard it had she not been so engrossed in her show.

"Do you remember that day when Bill, Richie, and Eddie went inside of Neibolt?"

"I remember a lot of things."

"You were scared. We all were. You cried. What happened then?"

"You… you put your arm around me."

"That's right, Stan. I can't make you come on a child's promise, but if you do, and I hope you do, I swear to you, right now, I will put my arm around you as much as you need me to."

Stan rested the phone on the counter. He shrouded the bird's body in Patty's nice hand towels – they'd been a wedding gift from her mother.

"Stan, are you still there?"

Stan picked the phone up again.

"Still here Mike, where is there for me to go?" Another laugh.

"Are… are you okay? Are you going to do some–"

_"Stan. Stop. Look at me!"_

"Well, gee Mike, it's been great talking. I hope we can catch up real soon, ok? I'll definitely consider everything very carefully."

"Will you come?"

"I'll see if I can get off from work, but I can't _promise_ I will."

Very crooked, from the corner of his eye.

_(A woman. Hollow eyes. Twisted neck. Broken nose. Shrouded in black.)_

The dead bird twitched. But the woman wasn't what followed him. She wasn't what lingered like a shadow always in his blind spot. She wasn't the magnetic force Stan had spent years turning his head away from. He wiped more sweat from his brow; he knew it wasn't sweat.

 _"Fucking look at me, please man."_ Stan covered his eyes.

"Stan, I hope you come. We need you."

A rush of wind hit his arm.

"Ok. Nice talking."

"Stan, wait–"

"Bye-bye."

And then it was all about the bird again.

Stan had never dug a hole in his life. He'd been a fussy child and so when his friends went through their sandcastle and mud pie and digging-to-China phases, Stan would sit on the sidelines and watch them patiently. Then he became an adult and no one expected him to play in the dirt and that was all fine. But then again he _had_ dug a hole, hadn't he? Hadn't they all dug a hole in that summer– No. Yes? No. Stanley Uris had never dug a hole. Not him. But now, shrouded bird in hand, an overwhelming urge to bury the little thing overcame him.

"Patty?" he called.

"Yes, Stanny?"

"I'm going for a walk."

"A walk? Stan, it's seven o'clock, the sun will set soon."

"I've got an hour or so. You can join me if you want." He knew she wouldn't.

"I'm just gonna stay here. There's a marathon of Seinfeld reruns coming up next. Maybe we should save our, uh, weekend _activities_ for tomorrow."

"Sure, Pats, sounds good."

"Are you okay, honey? Who was on the phone."

"Wrong number."

"Oh, okay. Make sure you're back by dark."

"Of course."

So Stan left through the backdoor. He barely travelled ten feet when he found Patty's garden shovel propped against the side of the house. It was old and hadn't been used much since Patty had turned her attention to the flower box. Stan grabbed it and struck the ground. Then he was digging. He threw his whole body into the movement – tendons, ligaments, muscle, bone – quivering and contracting with hot blood. Stick the blade into the dirt; stomp it in the earth; thrust the soil away. Over and over and over and over.

With the fifth pummel into the dirt, the wooden handle snapped and broke off into his hands. Stan threw it to the side and grabbed the shovel by its neck. He dropped to his knees and kept breaking into the Earth. His brow started to sweat again and droplets of red dripped into his eyes. His hair stuck to his face and his shoulder blades ached with an unrelenting ferocity. His knees screamed as the damp soil dirtied them. Then, he discarded what was left of the shovel and tore into the earth with his bare hands. Palms, fingers, nails into the grubby dirt until he hit the Georgia clay. _Red_ clay, just like baseball field, seeping like blood–

 _Teeth. Teeth around his face and digging in. The light blaring into his eyes; deadlight._ He couldn't forget. He could _never_ forget. Not Stan. Dirt caked under his fingernails.

 _"Stan! Stanley!"_ Now what could it be? Was it the barrage of repressed memory bubbling forth out of the blue, or was it the shadow that had been following him into the black?

"You're not my friends," Stanley whispered.

_"Stan, please."_

Flicker. Flash. Flicker. And someone was standing in the hole, Stan could feel it now, he'd always felt it.

 _Carpet fibers swirling around. Smoke. Powder. Rum. Sand. Milk._ He could never forget. He could turn his head away, but it was always there. He wiped the sweat from his brow and it was just as bloody as he knew it would be.

_"You're not bleeding."_

_Arms around him._ A magnet around him. A shadow. The thick edge of nothingness curling into a silhouette.

 _"The promise,"_ a mutter into the void. The void–

 _"Stan. Stop. Look at me. Please. I'm_ here. I am. I'll put my arm around you. _I promise I will. You don't have to come."_

Stan rose to his feet and grabbed the chickadee.

_(A bird. Hollow eyes. Twisted neck. Broken nose. Shrouded in black.)_

Blood seeped from the linen – there was so much blood. Hadn't there always been? The hole was complete. Stan picked up the bird in his quivering hands. He unwrapped the shroud and looked into its eyes again. Blood dripped to the ground. Blood from his hand.

He placed the ball of linen and feathers into the hole. The magnet disappeared. He packed the hole in with strange hesitation; a kindness; patient merit of the unworthy takes. He patted the earth tenderly and delicately. He plucked a few pansies from his wife's flower box and wove them into a small wreath. He could faintly hear the T.V. on inside. Modern Family; Seinfeld; Family Fued – wasn't it all the same? And so he smeared the blood across his face and wiped his hands on his trousers; he thought it might be nice to take a bath.

* * *

 

Mr. Uris turned the taps on.

* * *

 

Stan decided against the bath. He didn't want to worry Patty. He chose to go for that walk after all.

His shoes made a soft, almost absent noise as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He liked nice clothes; he liked nice shoes – and his shoes were nice. On the night of his

bath, he wore Cole Haan loafers. They weren't his nicest though – they were the pair he'd retired to wearing around the house. Outside of home and especially at work, he liked new shoes with clean leather and hard soles that announced his arrival with a powerful click on the hardwood of his office.

But these shoes, _those_ shoes, the one's he's wearing now– were worn. As he took his walk, he remembered that they'd been the first pair of nice shoes he'd bought. Maybe that's why he'd kept them. The soles were worn with the age of daily life – of walks with Patty and lunches with his father and visiting with his mother and going to work and dancing around the house. They'd been the shoes Stan had slipped on when the rocks were thrown into their bedroom window. The heels were worn now; the leather soles soft and tired – quiet. It seemed they made no sound at all.

Nobody on the street saw the blood on Stanley's face.

_"But you didn't–"_

* * *

 

He wiped the blood from his face.

 

_"Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra_

_chirutei, v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon_

_uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit yisrael, ba’agala_

_uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: “amen.” "_

 

Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world which He has created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,

and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon; and say, Amen.

* * *

 

The sun was setting now. Stan had always loved that time of day best. The sky was a dimming blue – still a bit pale – with licks of orange flaming on the horizon. And then it would darken into a medium violet and the streetlights would turn on and they would bring a new flames with their perfect, man-made symmetry – all alighting at the same time every night. Perfect.

They didn't live all that far from downtown, not really. Stan made his way down Peachtree Street. As his feet hit the concrete, he seemed to make no impact on the world. To Stanley Uris, reality was a linear set of causes and effects. Reality could only be exhibited by affecting the outside world.

Soundless, he felt like maybe he wasn't walking at all, but instead merely slipping by.

Stan liked the slabs of sidewalk on his street. They were all nice, new, and smooth. Each slab was a perfectly square three foot by three foot hunk of concrete. It was a uniformity that allowed Stan in his old Cole Haans to take two perfect, soundless steps. He passed over the threshold of a crack and landed his right foot a couple of inches after it and then bring his left down a couple of inches before the next crack. It was perfect rhythmic harmony. Right, left. Right, left.

_"–because it isn't real."_

* * *

 

He removed his wedding ring.

 

_"Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam ul’almei almaya._

_Yitbarach v’yishtabach, v’yitpa’ar v’yitromam_

_v’yitnaseh, v’yithadar v’yit’aleh v’yit’halal sh’mei_

_d’kud’sha, b’rich hu,_

_l’eila min-kol-birchata v’shirata, tushb’chata_

_v’nechemata da’amiran b’alma, v’im’ru: “amen.” "_

 

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.

* * *

 

Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.

He turned onto Westminster Drive and followed it downtown. The buildings faded from beautiful, grandiose Queen Anne homes, to the auto repair shops and mini malls of midtown. The sky had grown into an inky purple. Midtown Atlanta wasn't the safest place to be walking alone at night without so much as a phone, but Stan was not scared of such things.

But the damned sidewalk changed too. The stretch of concrete slabs were a bit older. There were still some new and perfect squares, but they were interspersed with the city's old standard slabs – three foot by six foot rectangles. Stan didn't mind terribly, but the slabs were just long enough for his two steps to be awkward. So he adjusted himself to three. Right, left, right again. Left, right, left again. He didn't like alternating his starting foot, but there wasn't much he could do about it. He adjusted his gait and continued in triple steps. Occasionally, there would be two or four of the new slabs from where the city had been forced to replace them and Stan would be forced to adjust himself again. Right, left. Right, left. Right, left, right. Left, right, left. Never hitting the cracks; floating. He didn't like the way the pressure of the seams felt under his thinning soles.

_"None of this is. Not Eddie's leper–"_

* * *

 

He was immersed in the bath.

 

_"Y’hei shlama raba min-sh’maya v’chayim aleinu_

_v’al-kol-yisrael, v’im’ru: “amen.” "_

 

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

* * *

 

Then he turned onto Peachtree Street. The sidewalk slabs became intolerable. There was a large silver puddle in the middle of a three foot by seven and a half foot diamond-shaped monstrosity. But there was no time to figure out an elaborate dance around the slabs, it was nearly ten o'clock in downtown Atlanta and the world was spinning around Stanley Uris.

His feet fell on the seams of the sidewalk slabs and it felt like knives digging into the arch of his foot and tendons and ligaments and muscle and bone _._ A man shoved into Stan's side; a woman awkwardly swerved around him. And no one, not one person noticed the blood, the awful, awful dripping, coalescing, swirling blood coming from the wreath of wounds along Stanley's face.

Reality was a linear set of causes and effects;

Reality was a linear set of causes and effects;

Reality was a linear set of causes and effects;

Reality _was supposed to be_ a linear set of causes and effects.

But he was pushing his way through the crowded streets, below the neon lights of Hooters, the Hard Rock Cafe, and the Clermont Lounge – where you could go in and pay a gal named Blondie twenty bucks to crush a can of beer between her tits, if that's what you like. Tube socks and rock'n'roll and tits and blues and ass and beer and tits and rock'n'roll and tube socks and tube sock and tube socks–

and there was blood pouring from his face and nobody–

_"–or Bill seeing Georgie or the woman I keep seeing."_

The woman. There was something behind him. Something always, _always,_ behind him. He didn't know what it was anymore – he didn't know anything at all. It was a magnetic force, that was intent on pulling Stanley Uris out of the blue and into the black. Rock and roll can never die and all that shit. Fingernails through flesh and teeth into tendons and ligaments and muscle and _bone_. The strings don't just unwind, they unfurl and crumble away.

That's when he started to scream. And boy, could the rest of the world sure hear that.

He remembered Eddie. An adorable little ball of anxiety and grit.

He remembered Ben. He'd had them dig a hole. A real hole. Stan had definitely dug a hole.

He remembered Beverly. She'd been the first girl he'd thought about in _that_ way, right?

He remembered Bill. He'd been the first boy he'd thought about in _that_ way, right?

He remembered Mike and his strong arm around him. Protective. Kind. Maybe Mike had been their real leader all along.

 _"Stan. Stan, please."_ A magnet; a repulsion. Stan looked behind, but nothing but a shadow was behind him. The crowd expanded and contracted around him as he stood stock still in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Well, fiddle-dee-dee, Scarlett," Stan had said to Patty when they'd decided to move to Atlanta. Where had he gotten that from? Richie Tozier, of course. Fiddle-dee-fucking-dee. Stan stood in front of the Fox Theatre now. By some divine coincidence, it so happened to be the theatre where Gone with the Wind had first premiered in 1939; it was the theatre that the author of the book had been leaving when she was struck by a car and killed.

They _were_ his friends, weren't they?

And then the clown. The leper. Georgie. The headless child. The blood. The burning hands. The woman.

_(A woman. Hollow eyes. Twisted neck. Broken nose. Shrouded in black.)_

_(A bird.. Hollow eyes. Twisted neck. Broken nose. Shrouded in black.)_

_"Please Stan. You don't have to come. Just please, don't do it. I'll put my arm around you. I'll let you cry as much as you have to. Please. Please. Please!"_

_Out of the blue–_

And so Stan walked into traffic.

_–and into the black._

He saw the headlights coming right at him and he did not move. Time unwinds just like string. Then, as the car sped towards him unseeing, the shadow came to life. It wasn't the woman. Mike Hanlon flickered in front of him for just a second. Stan reached out into the empty air and he could almost–

The car hit him. His neck snapped on impact.

_(A man. Hollow eyes. Twisted neck. Broken nose. Shrouded in black.)_

Richie Tozier was not there.

* * *

 

In Jewish tradition, after a person dies, they are given the Tahara, a ritual purification – a bath. Donald Uris turned on the taps. He wiped the blood off of his son's face. He removed his son's wedding ring. He immersed him in the bath. He dried the body. He dressed him in white. Not black; never black. He wrapped his son in a tallit embroidered with birds.

 

_"Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu_

_v’al kol-yisrael, v’imru: “amen.” "_

 

He who creates peace in His celestial heights,

may He create peace for us and for all Israel;

and say, Amen.

 


	2. Everything at Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, everything happens all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a few notes real quick unrelated to this specific fic:  
> One – there's this really good fic I just started reading but I want to recommend on praise of the composition of its prose alone. It's "are you lost enough?" by tozier and I'm 100% all about it.  
> Two - if you were a fan of 'Losers of Avenue A' and were upset to find it deleted, don't fret! If you contact me at either @gildediris on tumblr or gilded_iris@yahoo.com and I'll send you a pdf of it. Sorry to everyone who misses it, I hope this will make up for it. :)
> 
> Reminder that trigger warnings will be kept in the end notes

 

#  Everything at Once

  
  


May 28th, 2016 

_ Chicago, Illinois; Hampstead, England; Boston, Massachusetts; Derry, Maine; 30,000 ft. above the continental United States _

 

1

 

Bill, for once in his life, didn't feel like getting much writing done. It was a good thing though, because by the way Audra placed herself in his lap, soon enough he wouldn't have enough blood in his brain to do anything. Audra kissed him and smiled at the memory of the ponytail he'd had when they'd first met. The little hair he had now was cropped short. She ran her hands through it and kissed the top of his head.

"You look distracted," she said with a laugh and tilted his chin up. He smiled as their eyes met.

"Mmm. Not distracted, just content."

"Content?"

"Yeah," he smiled and looked at her eyes long enough to record every detail of their expression. Over the past few months, Bill had felt a sudden need to memorize these sort of things. He thought he might be getting wiser. "Content," he hummed, "I'm just… happy, you know?"

"Oh, I know." She wiggled her hips a bit. Yep, definitely not enough blood for his brain. "So what do you want to do tonight, Bill? We could order some curry. Don't you love saying that? I swear, if there's one thing I love about England, it's the Indian food." Bill kissed her neck. He was already at half-mast and Audra knew it. "Or, we could go out. You seem like you want to go out," she giggled.

"Are you trying to be sly? Because I know that you want to stay in just as much as I do."

"You caught me," Audra said. She started to help him out of his shirt. He always wore t shirts during his late night writing sessions and tonight it was a Ghost-Busters' shirt he'd found in his old things a few days before they'd flown out to London. He was also wearing heavy jeans and New Balance sneakers with thick socks – Audra still found him incredibly hot. Maybe it was because she'd spent her early twenties fucking around with Hollywood slicks who wouldn't be caught dead in anything without a label, but Bill's laid-back New England manner charmed her, even now after fifteen years of marriage. 

"You're all mine," she whispered as he unzipped her dress.

 

"You open this fucking door!" Tom barrelled his body against their bedroom door. Beverly could swear she felt the whole room shake. She pulled a cigarette from the box she kept taped under her vanity and lit up. 

She tightened the sash of her dressing gown and ran to Tom's bureau where she fumbled through the drawers. 

"I know you, Bevvie!" he screamed and pounded his fist. The hinges wouldn't last much longer. "You're looking for the key, but you won't find it!" He jangled a ring of keys loud enough for her to hear.  _ Shit. _ She glanced at the safe. 

The pounding stopped. "Bevvie…" Tom softened. "We can stop this. You unlock this door and pull down your skirt and I'll get the belt. You don't even need to worry about the last resort." The Last Resort. That was what they safe was for; that was what they keys were for; that was the reason Beverly Rogan was trying to figure out how to shimmy out of the window of their Chicago penthouse without falling to her death like Jenny fucking Curran. If anyone heard them through the walls, no one would come until the Last Resort. The neighbors couldn't give less of a fuck, or maybe they were just scared. There was something awful, something  _ familiar, _ about the way injustices were so easily ignored. Beverly ran back to the window. It was sealed shut. She pulled her quivering hands into fists so tight her fingernails bit at her palms. 

"You leave me alone, Tom!" she called back, voice impossibly level. "You leave me alone. I'm going to leave now and I'm not coming back."

She knew what was going to happen next, right? Hadn't she seen it before? Hadn't Beverly Rogan seen  _ everything  _ before? Oh yes. Beverly had seen it all.

Beverly picked up the lid of her powder jar, the one with the turtle pattern. She saw it now. She'd seen it every night since the night she'd first seen it. It didn't make sense, not really. But then again, didn't it?

 

Ben hated being in Boston. Really he hated being anywhere but home in Nebraska. And then again, he wasn't ever particularly happy there either, but at least it was easier to be lonely in the middle of a cornfield. Bone-crushing solitude in a city was a lot harder to reconcile. Just today, someone had recognized him on the street and had him sign a copy of the  _ Times' _ magazine with his face on the cover. The interaction lasted five minutes and was the closest thing Ben'd had to a friendship in a long time. 

In Nebraska, there was always Ricky Lee, the barkeep with too much time on his hands. He and Ben were companionable. Ben liked him well enough. Ricky had three young sons, so whenever Ben travelled somewhere new, he'd bring things back for them. Ricky always had the best whiskey on hand, so there was that too. 

Ben grabbed the pint-sized bottle of Maker's Mark from his hotel room mini fridge and took the cap off with his teeth. Very well then. He'd be going home soon anyway. His commision was a tidy one – a new building for the Boston Architectural school. The price tag had plenty of zeros behind it, not that Ben cared all that much. By now he'd long amassed more than enough money to keep up his meager lifestyle for centuries, so he gave it away in loads.. The  _ Time _ article had called it charitable. Ben called it trimming the fat.

 

When Tom had come home with the gun five years ago, Beverly had cried. 

_ "Don't you worry,"  _ he'd said, pinching her chin,  _ "you quit being a cunt with the cigarettes and you'll never have to see this thing again. It's only a last resort!"  _ Boy, how he'd laughed; Beverly had laughed too. It'd been a joke, right? Beverly spent a lot of time telling herself that it was a joke. But the gun had stayed in the safe along with hard assets of the cash she'd earned. Tom's property. When she'd asked if he intended to keep the gun, Tom had made fun of her for thinking the threat had been serious. It was just for protection, of course. 

Tom kept the key with him at all times. Joke or not, he sure liked to talk about the Last Resort. 

The fight tonight had been stupid, but then again, like so many stupid things, it'd snowballed real fast. Beverly couldn't even remember how it'd started. Hadn't it been over the cut of her blouse? Or maybe her skirt had been too short. Or maybe she'd done a bad job putting makeup on the bruises on her arm. Or maybe he'd sworn he could smell ash on her breath. Or maybe or maybe or maybe — it didn't matter because now Beverly was scared. It wasn't the first time she'd decided to leave him. In fact, in the last two years, she'd made a move to get out on six separate occasions. This was the seventh. Wasn't seven a lucky number though?

"Beverly!" he screamed once more. Beverly stubbed the cigarette out and spritzed enough perfume to soak out the smell. She put the jar down and pulled down her skirt. She unlocked the door. Seven didn't feel like such a lucky number anymore. 

 

Bill was full-flagged now, but Audra loved to drag out the foreplay. Hell, Bill loved it too – even if sometimes it brought him a little too close to the edge.

She led him out of his study and into the bedroom of their little rental cottage. It was a quaint little home, far under budget, and it would be charming had it not been for the serious HVAC problems. Oh well, Bill could think up a dozen ways to keep warm. 

 

_ One good thing about big cities,  _ Ben thought,  _ is that it's easy to get your dick wet.  _ He laughed to himself and dug around in his pocket for the phone number of a pretty woman from the sod-turning ceremony.

_ "Call me, Mr. Hanscom,"  _ she'd whispered through thick eyelashes and scarlet lipstick. Ben hadn't intended on calling her, but it'd been a few months now since he'd gotten laid, so it might be nice after all. 

There might have been some irony in the fact that Ben had designed the hotel he was staying in all alone, but he was too sloshed to take notice. In fact, the Maker's Mark was the last bottle of booze in the fridge. He'd spent the evening going through all the little samples until he was properly drunk. He rubbed his beard and pulled the trash can close as a last resort.

His phone rang before he could call the mystery woman.

 

The phone in Bill's study rang. It made Audra shiver. No one called that number;  _ no one.  _ It was the phone they used for all their 'normal' biddings during their stay. They only used it to call out for food delivery and local inquiries  – everything business related was done through their cell phones. It was only when it started to ring that Audra realized she'd never even  _ heard  _ it ring before. The few calls they'd made from it had all been outcalls. It was a strange sound. Strange indeed. 

 

Beverly Marsh's ass was sore and welted and  _ used  _ when her cellphone rang. She answered before Tom could hear it ring.

"Beverly? It's Mike."

"Mike?"

"Mike Hanlon. From Derry. It's–"

"I'll be there."

"Ok. Get the next flight to Maine–"

"I know. I'll be there. I told you; I promised. I'll see you soon, Mike."

Tom polished the Last Resort in the next room. 

Beverly pulled out her old suitcase – the one that had been packed and unpacked sick times. She ripped through her drawers for suitable clothes, but then what were suitable clothes in a situation like this? Monster hunting in Armani? Sewer spelunking in Prada? And sure as hell Beverly didn't want to get her own designs covered in blood. That was one certainty – there would be blood. 

Her dresser was like a fossil record of all the clothes she'd ever owned and she tore through it until she reached the late 90's. She threw a handful of clothes from the Gap into the suitcase. They were outdated, worn; they smelled like detergent. They would do nicely. A pair of Levi's too. T shirts. Sneakers. 

 

Ben let the phone ring for a thirty twenty seconds before making himself answer the unknown number with a Derry area code. He cleared his throat.

"Hello?" he hiccuped. 

"Is this Ben Hanscom?"

"Yes. I don't know how you got this number, but you've actually reached my cell. Commission inquiries must be made through my firm's phone."

"I'm not calling on business. This is Mike."

"I'm sorry, who?"

"It's Mike Hanlon. We grew up together."

"I don't– wait you were the homeschool kid, right?"

"Yep and you were the new kid." The both laughed.

"Holy hell, it's been what twenty years?"

"Something like that."

"Listen man, I'd love to catch up, it's just a little late tonight–"

"It's back."

"It." It wasn't a question. Ben let the word tumble and roll about his head. He switched his phone to the other hand and looked at his palm. The scar was back. Back. That was the thing, because hadn't it returned once before? Hadn't they all been in Nebraska? Mike Hanlon felt at home in Nebraska, sure. It was all very confusing and terrifying to match. Ben closed his fist and looked at the suitcase left open next to the hotel's desk. He'd been living out of it for nearly a week now, but had yet to put his clothes on hangers. He'd never been all that good at unpacking. 

"Do you remember the promise?"

"Yeah, Mike. Yeah, I remember."

"Then you'll come?"

"Yes."

And that was that. Ben closed the lid of his ever-packed suitcase and bought an airline ticket.

 

"Let it ring," Audra said. Her voice came smooth and clear – it should have been seductive too, but as good as an actress as she was, hiding the fear was already hard enough. 

 

2

 

Mike decided that it might be a good idea to call Stan back and check in on him. His wife answered and told him that Stan had gone for a walk an hour earlier. He hadn't come home yet. She was worried. She wanted to know who Mike was. She wanted to know why there were feathers next to the phone. She didn't say that bit, but Mike would learn it soon enough. He would want to know why too. 

There was something wrong and there was something wrong and there was _ something wrong. _ That was somewhere to start. And so he cut 20 mg from the brick hidden in the couch cushion and mixed it with water in a spoon for a cooker. No time for a filter. No time for vitamin C. Water from the sink. A profound sense of urgency beat through his veins. It'd been a half hour since he talked with Stan. He needed to get there and fast. He had a quick internal dispute over where to inject – the neck would get him there fastest, but it was also an easy way to die. Mike wrapped a shoestring tourniquet around his forearm instead. The bic wouldn't light fast enough. When it finally did, Mike drew the syringe with his teeth, threw the spoon aside, flicked his vein, and then he was off. 

 

੩

 

_ The sky was a deep bruise hugging Mike in clammy warmth. It was confining, restrictive like boiling honey. He pushed through the adhesive void.  _

_ Time was on a loop; it wanted Mike to check in on him, right? And with time on his side, he couldn't possibly go wrong. But at the rate it took for him to lift a leaden foot, it could take hours even in the cradle of infinity.  _

_ He flickered into the seams of nothingness. It was an imperfect science, indeed. Most of the time when Mike slipped into the macroverse he fell right into the current time stream, other times he was a few seconds behind. Time travel in the macroverse was a strange thing in the macroverse. It only happened in matters of minutes and left them both back where they'd left in their own reality and with one hell of a headache. In their memory sessions, Richie and Mike often seen themselves as children, but those hops had been based in the memories he and Richie had mapped out – as well as the ones Eddie wrote down for them. As the only three with their memories, they were something of a triumvirate, but Richie and Mike were the ones who could travel to the macroverse and after Eddie's almost-death, he was perfectly happy to sit on the sidelines, helping by remembering things here and there. But even with the cumulative memories, the memory sessions were fragile. Delicate. Unreliable. They'd revisited Neibolt over fifty times in the past two years and each session Bill's shirt was a slightly different pattern. Eddie swore it'd been Stewart plaid and Richie claimed it was check flannel so in their sessions it was a fluxing mixture of both. Richie and Mike took what they could get though, and so they looked on to the planes of fibrous remembrances from the summer of 1989 as the memories of children – it was not time travel.  _

_ The macroverse bubble was huge, but Mike had delineated three viewerships: the mnemonic in which they studied memories, the teleportive in which Mike hopped in on their friends, and the voidspace, unreality, dark nothingness in which they entered the macroverse and convened.  They still couldn't affect the world outside, not really – that'd only happened once, on that night in 2014, and even then it'd only been a matter of seconds compressed into a scar on the line of time. And that was with Richie, of course. Mike had never even come close to breaching through the macroverse during a trip. _

_ There was something about Richie – perhaps it was his childish air – that allowed him unprecedented access into the bowels of unreality. Mike had spent years cultivating his own abilities, and then all of the sudden Richie had shown up on the scene with a natural inclination. No, that wasn't how it happened and Mike knew it, but still there was always a lick of jealousy. Mike might have been booted to second place, but he was still the only other Loser who could slip into the macroverse indepently. And he'd stopped using heroin! Supernatural interference aside, that was an accomplishment in and of itself, especially in the epicenter of the American opioid crisis. Well, he  _ had _ quit. But the natural process Richie had developed with Mike consisted at an hour minimum of what Richie had so delicately called a "mental enema" that was essentially a refined form of meditation and self-hypnosis. So that's how Mike made his sober entry – Richie did it the same way, only he could make it happen in minutes not hours. There was that jealousy flaring up right now because Mike didn't have time. There was something definitely wrong and Mike needed to buzz in on Stan as soon as the universe would allow. Hence mainlining heroin, perhaps the least sexy form of a mental enema.  _

_ And then he was there. But Richie wasn't. They didn't have a session scheduled, of course, but Richie seemed to have a natural sense to just know when Mike entered without him. So where was he now? _

 

੪

 

_ Flicker. London approximately. He saw Audra Phillips grind on her husband. The universe had perhaps decided that Mike was being dramatic. If it wasn't going to show him Stan right away, there had to be a reason for it. Maybe the quickshot of heroin would go to waste. Mike clung to the belief that the turtle was out there somewhere, but everyday it seemed more and more likely that there had never been a turtle at all and that the drugs had affected his reality just as much as his unreality. Maybe that's why it went away when Richie joined him. His mind didn't need an imaginary friend anymore. Except right now it did. Bill unzipped Audra's dress and Mike made himself look away. What he wouldn't give to have Richie's hopping abilities, if only to stop the inopportune drop-ins. But then again it was Mike's mild manner that earned him the position unanimously voted by the two members of the jumping committee – himself included, of course. It wasn't out of perverseness as they often liked to joke to bring some much levity to their situation, but Mike was emotionally stronger. _

_ Richie couldn't take watching Ben drink himself to death; the one time he saw Beverly get knocked in the jaw had traumatized him. So it was Mike who took the monitoring duty. When their sessions weren't filled with studying It's behaviors, they found themselves counselling each other. Reality hopping was hard, but Mike could take it just a bit easier. Watching his parents burn to death had prepared him for the unrelenting injustice the world presented him with. And oh! What a fucking blessing the universe had given him. It didn't make it easy to watch though. That was something he missed dearly about the heroin. Now that it was back in his system there was at least a warm veil around him like vaseline on a camera lens. He heard the phone ring in Bill's study. The universe ripped him away before he could accidentally interact with himself.  _

 

੫

 

_ Flicker. Boston. It must've been a few minutes before the phone call, or maybe a few minutes after – it was hard to tell with Ben sometimes. So much of his life was more of the same. Depression can do that to a man. Ben started packing, definitely after then. Well if closing a suitcase and picking it up with rage-filled eyes and quivering hands could be considered packing. _

 

੬

 

_ Flicker. Chicago. Beverly laid stomach-down on her own bed, naked from the waist down. And there was Tom, of course, belt in hand. He was perfectly clothed – he always was when he dealt out the whoopings, if only to add an extra layer of humiliation. Beverly didn't move when he cracked the belt down. Mike knew all too well that she'd stopped flinching a few years back. Mike averted his eyes. There was another kiss from the rotten lips of jealousy. Richie could control the flickers almost perfectly. He was the one who perfected the method to go back in Derry's history through memory and he was the one who could tap into the veins of the city and high-ride with Mike struggling behind. Richie liked to insist that Mike was still the master, but Mike knew better. Even if Richie really did believe it, there was no denying that he was better at it. The kid had talent. Mike had experience. Talent proved to weigh more.  _

_ Beverly gasped behind him and Mike heard Tom's zipper. A wave of guilt fell over him – Mike called it the deep, rolling nausea of complicitness; Richie called it Hell.   _

 

੭

 

_ Flicker. Stanley Uris' kitchen. Feathers on the table. Something was wrong indeed. All hopes of divine intervention were vanished. Stan was on the phone with Mike, reality Mike, so to speak. It was strange and it was rare. Stan was not okay. On the other end of the telephone wire it was apparent that he was in crisis.  _

_ "Stan," Mike tried. He heard his voice echo into the void like skipping stone. But Stan heard it. Somehow, Mike knew he heard it. "Stan, please!" And then he was gone.  _

_ Stan looked at Mike from the corner of his eye. And then there was the bird. The dead bird. A chickadee. Beak shattered. Window broken. Scarring crack. Broken neck. Stan did that. The realization dripped into Mike's eyes like syrup. If time was doing what Mike suspected it was doing there were two alternative controllers: the turtle and It – this was either a rescue mission or a form of torture. Mike saw himself stuck. He was somewhere millions of miles out of reality screaming through a bulging screen to a man who refused to hear him and now he was going to have to watch Stan die. Helpless. Just like Stan in front of Neibolt. Mike remembered so clearly how his friend had stared at the sunflowers because he couldn't bear to see the house. He'd held his arms to his chest and said, "I can't _

 

8

 

go in there." He was crying. Mike knew he was crying. Soft little hiccups broke their restraints in Stan's throat. His breathing picked up. Mike didn't look at him; Mike didn't want to embarrass him. They were boys. They didn't cry. But then it wasn't just crying anymore, it was sobbing. Stan hugged his arms tighter around himself and sobbed to the sweetgrass. 

Beverly and Ben didn't move their eyes from Neibolt but Mike turned around. Stan's eyes were red and his head was bowed. His straw was pinched delicately between his fingers. The rest of them had tossed them aside as soon as Richie and Eddie had drawn the short ones, but Stan kept hold of his. 

"I can't go inside, Mike. I can't." And then Stan was looking at Mike and Mike was looking at Stan. They were about the same height, but Stan looked so much smaller. Mike put his arm on Stan's shoulder. A comfort; a cry for intimacy? But they were boys! – Stan was a man now – and Mike wasn't about to pull another boy into an embrace. Certainly not in the open. Mike looked at Neibolt, clenched his jaw and wrapped his arm around Stan anyway. He was good at being strong for other people. It was all very pathetic and very necessary. 

 

੯

 

_ The groundless ground shook and suddenly the teleportive macroverse seemed to shatter. All of Stan's life was laid before Mike. And that life had an end. It was a fact. Stan the man was going to kill himself; Stan the man had  _ already _ killed himself. Mike saw and saw and saw. He was there too. _

_ They were in the kitchen.  _

_ "Stan. I know you can see me." Mike reached for Stan's shoulder but his hand was repelled.  _

_ They were in the backyard. Stan's face was bleeding, but the blood dripped upwards just as it had on the night of Eddie's resuscitation. Stan didn't remember that night, none of them did. When Mike'd hinted at it, Stan had shut that down quick. Too quick.  _

_ "Stan!" _

_ The blood swirled around, almost as though Stan were in reality but the blood was not.  _

_ Flicker, flicker, flicker. The ticker tape was almost all gone – consumed.  _ Memorize him,  _ Mike thought in desperation,  _ get it all right. Don't get the shirt pattern wrong, for the love of God make a perfect copy.  _ It would be no use. Flicker, flicker, flicker. The ball was getting closer and Mike hadn't even picked up his bat.  _

"Here," Eddie handed Richie a little pill, "take this."

_ Stan was ripping into the flesh of the earth. Mike grabbed the shovel and the magnets of the universe snapped it in half. Mike felt desperate, happy tears rage from his eyes. He'd done that! He'd snapped the shovel! He had made a real, physical impact through the macroverse bubble. Mike's far away body convulsed. Twenty impure milligrams was a lot. He should have done more. _

"What is it?" Richie asked, "I'd like to avoid another Dick Pill Incident if at all possible."

"God!" Eddie laughed. "Can we please agree not to call it that? It's valium, four milligrams," Eddie flashed the prescription bottle to Richie. Richie frowned. 

_ Stan kept digging anyway. Burrowing like an animal. The blood was soaking now. Mike looked at the shovel handle. He realized he hadn't felt the woodgrain.  _

"Rich, you aren't going to stop shaking and my propranolol isn't heavy-duty enough to handle the kind of anxiety we're both about to face. I filled the prescription a week ago. Foresight, I guess. I'm not going to peer-pressure you or anything, but this is a seven hour flight. NA isn't going to take away your chip for using a medication as intended under perfectly reasonable circumstance."

Richie laughed. "Yep. So as soon as we go back I'm going to march on down to Narcotics Anonymous and tell them that I took a benzo because I was scared of fighting an interdimensional being of pure light that disguises itself as a kitschy clown. That'll go over well." 

_ They were walking. Mike running after Stan's slow, careful, calculated steps. Right, left. Right, left. Mike stepped on all the cracks.  _

_ "Stan. Stan please." _

_ The suburbs. Midtown. Downtown. Peachtree Street.  _

_ Stan turned around and looked right at him. Then his eyes fell away as though they hadn't been set on him at all.  _

Eddie groaned. 

"Look, Eds, that's not what I'm worried about. Fuck, I have no doubt in my mind that we'll all be drunk out of our minds tonight. I'm not going to do anything harder, but I'm just saying NA can go fuck itself while we're on this little trip."

"So you want the Valium then?"

"Are you taking any?"

"No. I'm… I'm actually okay right now." Eddie held his hand out and was surprised by its stillness. Richie looked at it with envious eyes as his own hands twitched at his sides. "Besides, you'll fall asleep in twenty minutes on this, I know you, Rich, and someone needs to wipe the drool from your chin."

"I don't drool."

"Yes you do."

"What if… what if something happens and I need to be alert?"

"Rich, this flight is going to be the last time in the foreseeable future where you don't need to be alert. Take advantage of it while you can."

Richie took the pill and fell asleep with his head on Eddie's shoulder before they were all the way in the air.

_ The Fox Theatre. Desperation. Every moment unfolded at once. All around Mike like the view from within a diamond. Stan was crying in all of it. Mike could do it; he had to do it. He saw he wasn't going to, but he'd try all the same. He screamed in hopes that Richie would hear him, but Richie was 30,000 feet in the air and a million miles away. He could do it alone. He couldn't do it alone.  _

_ Breathe.  _

_ In.  _

_ Out. _

_ In. _

_ Honey. _

_ Someone ran into Stan. Someone else walked by him. _

_ Silk. _

_ He walked into traffic. _

_ Jaunt. _

_ Mike walked into traffic too. The cars didn't slow down, but time was at a near complete stop. It didn't matter though. It'd already happened. _

_ Mike Hanlon breached into reality just in time to be the last thin Stan saw. And then he was gone. Weren't they all gone?  _

 

10

 

"You fucking cunt!" Tom grabbed her by the hair and tore her head backwards. He looked as though he were going to devour her thin white neck. There was a time once, or rather there were a lot of times, when Beverly would let him. She was beautiful,  _ fucking beautiful _ , and maybe if he just bite straight into her neck she'd get to be an ugly, bloody mess. But she couldn't do that. Not now. She'd made a promise and this wasn't how it went. A thousand lights shone in her eyes. She tried to move away, but he pulled her hair harder. A thick, dull pain radiated through her scalp.

Tom forced her to face him. His right hand still in her hair, the Last Resort in his left

hand. Was it loaded? Did it matter? Couldn't unload guns fire? Hadn't that happened once? Beverly looked at the table behind her and Tom tightened his grip.

"You're not going anywhere! You think this is a goddamned game, huh? You think you get to fuck with me like this?"

"Tom, I have to go." It felt like he might just rip all the damn hair clean out. She caught the glint of a pair of scissors on the table. She kept her gaze fixed on his. She pushed a few tears through and slid her hand behind her. "Tom, I'm  _ sorry.  _ You're right, I was playing a game earlier, but now I  _ have  _ to go. I'm not leaving you, I'll come back."

"You're never leaving me." 

"I'm not," Beverly cooed. Perfectly formed tears dripped obediently down her face. She'd gotten good at crying like this. Just a bit. Not enough to redden her complexion. Tom liked when she cried this way. The grip loosened.

 

"Bill, we can't just leave!" Audra pulled the straps of her dress up her shoulders, not bothering with the zip. "We have commitments, for fuck's sake! We've got to be on set tomorrow–"

"You're right.  _ We  _ can't leave–"

"Oh don't you play that game with me, Bill!"

"I'm not playing a game. Audra, I have to go."

"Who was it? Bill, I know you better than anyone else and I can't think of one person who could call you out of the blue and convince you to take the next plane back to God knows where!"

 

"Who was on the phone, Bevvie?" The grip tightened again. Beverly's gaze flickered down just long enough to see that Tom was already hard again. Her hand snaked back a little further. 

"No one, Tom. No one, at all."

"You better start explaining some things real quick." The gun twitched in his hand. "You got that? You play runaway, you take your punishment, you fuck me real good, and now we're back to runaway? You're a fucking psycho, you know that?"

"Yes, Tom. I know."

She had seen it before. She had seen it all. An unloaded gun shooting anyway – a cattle gun, but a gun all the same. But the Last Resort wouldn't fire. Not tonight, anyway. It was told. Beverly's eyes flickered glowing yellow. Something akin to fear flashed over Tom. It was replaced with fury real quick. Beverly's fingertips brushed the scissors. 

 

"I huh-h-hh-have," Bill swallowed. "I have to go."

"Bill…" The color drained from Audra's face. "Who was on the phone?" 

"An old fuh-friend. Suh-s-something's happened buh-back home."

"Back home?" Bill's parents had died years ago. Bill's home was with Audra now.

"Duh-D-DDerry."

"Bill, baby, why… you're stuttering."

"Thu-this is something I have to do. I puh-promised. Twenty-seven years ago, I  _ promised.  _ Hell, I was the one who made everyone else promise!" There was a manic edge to his voice. Scared? Restless? Awoken? "The call was from Muh-Mike Hanlon. We were friends when we were kids. I made him and the rest of our friends promise to come back to Derry in twenty-seven years."

"Like a school reunion? Bill you aren't making any sense."

"I know. I cuh-c-c-can't tell you w-w-ww-why." Audra watched the syllables kick about in his throat and took this as a literal truth. She knew then that there wasn't anything she could do to make him stay. 

"How… how long will you be gone?"

"I cuh-can't say."

 

Beverly's fingers reached the scissors. 

 

"L-l-look, Audra. My buh-brother…"

"George?" Audra's entire expression softened. She knew nearly everything about her husband, but George was not a name often spoken in their house. She knew Bill's brother was dead and had been that way for a very long time, but Bill was silent on the matter, almost unaffected. She'd always taken it as a strange coping mechanism. If this was about George, that would explain a lot. It would have to.

"Juh-Georgie. He… I… I nuh-need to g-go home. I can't tell you everything, but I n-need you to understand two things."

 

She grabbed them. Tom kept staring at her face, his eyes twitching.

 

"What are they?"

"I huh-have to go and you can't come."

"Bill…"

"Audra,  _ please.  _ I need to go and I need to go alone." Bill held his hand in a fist and peeled his fingers back for Audra to see.

"Is that a scar?"

"Yuh-yes."

"That… I've never seen that before."

"Me either. I'd fuh-forgotten about it. Shit, yuh-you're nuh-not going to buh-believe me."

"I'd believe anything you say, Bill. I love you."

"It doens't make any suh-sense, but I forgot about Georgie. I fuh-forgot he was murdered."

Audra had no words, but her wide, watering eyes asked a million questions. Bill had no answers.

"Let me help. Whatever it is, Bill. Let me help."

"Yuh-you can't." Bill drew her to his chest. She cried into his t shirt. He zipped her dress back up. "I'll cuh-come home, but you have to p-promise to stay here. Duh-don't worry about a thing, ok? You stay right here and g-go to fuh-filming and make up a stupid lie on wuh-where I am. Yuh-you can throw me under the buh-bus as much as you have to."

Audra pulled away. Her eyelashes were wet with tears but she'd stopped crying. 

 

It happened in an instant. Beverly Rogan stabbed her husband in the groin with the scissors and slowly pulled them out of his thigh with a sick wet noise. He threw the gun across the room as he grabbed his wound. He didn't let go of her hair. Tom howled and ripped her head down so she was eye level with the stab wound. He was still hard. Beverly clutched the scissors and stared at him in wide-eyed horror.

 

"Okay, Bill." Audra kissed his closed lips and stroked his hair once more. "But you've got to come back to me. Soon, Bill. Promise you'll be back soon."

Bill tilted her chin up with a feather touch. A listless tear fell from her eye. He wiped it away.

"I puh-promise. Audra, I luh-l-l-l-luh-love you more than I can suh-say. Luh-literally." They both laughed at that and suddenly it was okay. They would be okay. Bill would leave and run with the wolves or scream at the moon or meditate in the woods or whatever the fuck it was he had to do – he would do it and he would come back to her. 

 

"You whore!" Tom slammed his knee into Beverly's stomach. "You stab me again, just fucking try! Didn't do you any fucking good! You can't hurt me!"

Beverly bared the scissors and trembled behind them. He was right. She could stab him and stab him and all he had to do was catch her forearm and snap it in half. But she knew what happened next. She'd seen it. She'd done it before. 

Tom cackled as she hesitated and he gave up a few inches on her hair, swinging her around like a boneless rag doll. She stared him in the eyes and stared at the gun. She could get to it before him. She could do it. She could. She already had. 

"You and me Bevvie! It'll always be you and me!" 

 

Ben Hanscom didn't have anyone try to stop him. He didn't have anyone at all. 

 

Her movements were quick and fox-like in their veracity. With one movement she was across the room clutching the Last Resort in her shaking paws. It took Tom all of ten seconds to process the ponytail worth of hair still clutched in his hand. He looked at her and looked back to the hair. To her, to the hair. The scissors–

She looked like a boy.

 

11

 

And so Beverly Marsh got into her Premier. And so Bill Denbrough got into his Premier.  And so Ben Hanscom got into his Premier. And it just so happened that this all happened at once. It was a twin moment – five seconds later, Stanley Uris would arrive at the Fox Theatre. Richie and Eddie were already high in the sky. Mike was scattered through it all. And there was nothing anyone could do about any of it. 

_ "Fuck!" Mike screamed to the universe. _

_ The universe didn't scream back.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: semi-graphic intravenous drug use, allusion to suicide, major spousal abuse, allusion to marital rape


	3. Sailor's Warning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind."
> 
> -Hamlet

#  Sailor's Warning

 

1

  
  


"Trashmouth Tozier and Eddie Spaghetti ride again!" Richie declared as he opened the door of an impressive '89 Pontiac Firebird. A rental, of course. Eddie'd pulled some strings to book it. Or rather Richie had pulled some strings posing as Eddie. Either way, it was theirs for the next few days.

Richie slipped the car key onto his key ring. He had all sorts of keychains rattling about. His favorite was a little plastic Jesus with a flashlight on the tail end. He'd gotten it at a joke shop in Colorado a few years before meeting Eddie again.  _ He lights the way, Eds!  _ Richie liked to say,  _ Literally!  _ Richie was no longer the no-meat-on-Friday Catholic of his youth – really he hadn't been since the summer of '89, and maybe even before that – but he appreciated the gimmick all the same. A year ago his parents died. His dad was first. Wentworth's lifelong chain smoking finally caught up with him. Cancer in the larynx. It'd been enough to get Richie to quit cigarettes, at least for a while. His mom followed his dad not two months later. It was a heart attack for her. Both had been given traditional Roman Catholic funerals – and Maggie's was the last time Richie'd set foot in a church. Now, he rubbed his fingers over the worn paint of the sacred heart on Jesus' chest and wondered if maybe he should try and make good with the big man upstairs – well if there was an upstairs to begin with, Richie wasn't so sure. But there was a downstairs, he knew that much. Below. Hell.  _ Sewers.  _

"I can't believe you got us this joke of a car," Eddie tore him out of his thoughts. He had a special way of doing that, even when he didn't realize it. Richie rolled his eyes and got in the driver's seat. That was their new thing, Richie carting Eddie around. 

"Joke? Eds, my dear this is  _ retro.  _ A real classic. Old school cool. You know, the works."

"You do realize that that makes us retro too?" Eddie laughed as he buckled himself in.  _ Seatbelt. Ha! Does safety really matter when you're driving straight into the gates of Hell? _

"I, for one, take it in stride. Besides, it's better that we age into retroness than the alternative. I'd much rather be among the ranks of  _ Saved by the Bell _ and Duran Duran than be dead." 

"Can we not be morbid right now?"

"Eddie, dahling, in twenty minutes we're going to be in Derry. This is the perfect fucking time to be morbid," Richie said, pulling out of the satellite parking lot of the Bangor International Airport. He set his concentration on the road. There were thoughts, of course. Bad thoughts. Burning thoughts. _Eddie dying and dead._

"Earth to Richie. Are you okay?"

"Sure, Eds. I'm Mr. Ok, you know me." Richie smiled a smile that Eddie knew all too well meant that Richie was the furthest from ok he could be.

"I know you aren't and hell, I'm not either, but how about instead of thinking about all the shit that's about to happen, we focus on seeing everybody else. How's that?" Eddie rubbed Richie's arm and Richie's smile warmed.

"You're right. It'll be good to see them. For real, I mean."

"When's the last time you saw them in your little thingy?"

"My little thingy? Eddie, my dahling, you of all people should know that my thingy is far from little."

"Beep-fucking-beep."

"About a year and a half, to answer your question. Mike visits every couple of weeks though."

"Well, I'm ready to see them for myself." Since their reunion, Richie and Eddie had collected as much information on their friends the internet had to offer. The primary reason was to spark their memories, of course, but there was an undeniable chase of nostalgia, of supreme closeness, to their search. Whenever Bill was interviewed for his work on the big screen, for instance, Richie and Eddie would curl up on the couch together to watch. "It's weird to think that we know so much about them, that we remember them in the first place, and yet they know nothing about us. It's like a one-way friendship. God, should we even tell them that we've basically been voyeurs to their lives for the past two years?"

"I don't know. If you think that we've been voyeurs for looking at news clips, imagine how Mike's feels. When we got together to save you, they weren't so keen on learning about his little drop-ins." Richie gave a thin smile. "But it'll be alright. Everything will be."

They'd caught the last flight out of L.A. the night before. The road was empty and the sky was angry. It was almost six in the morning now and the beginning sunlight was just showing it's promising starts, burning an array of clouds a blazing red. Richie dropped his voice and did the British Guy, or rather the grown-up version of the British Guy – although it'd always just be the British Guy to Eddie. "Like a red morn that ever yet betokened, wreck the seamen, tempest to the field, sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds, gusts and foul flaws to herdsmen and to herd."

"I'm sorry, what?" Eddie laughed incredulously.

"Shakespeare. 'Venus and Adonis' specifically. Basically, it's swashbuckler-speak for that old saying. You know, red sky at night, sailor's delight–"

"–Red sky at morning, sailor's warning. Yeah, I got that. What I want to know is why you're reciting Shakespeare. Hell, I didn't even know you  _ knew _ any Shakespeare, much less have an obscure little verse memorized."

"I like Shakespeare."

"Sure you do." Eddie laughed.

"I do." Richie did not laugh. 

"Really?"

"Sincerely. I was in Hamlet in my high school's production senior year. Titular role," Richie said, grip tightening on the steering wheel. 

"I didn't know that about you." A wave of some deep emotion fell over Eddie as he realized this. Sadness perhaps, but fear was more likely. For them, it was always fear.

"Well, I was better suited for comedy. Trish McNish raked me over in the school paper. I lost my contacts on the night of our premiere and had to wear my glasses. Trish said I wasn't 'swoony' enough to play Hamlet."

"Ouch. Well, you're swoony enough for me, Prince of Denmark or not," Eddie leaned over to place a kiss on Richie's cheek. Richie kept his eyes set on the road. "Besides, better Trish McNish than Greta Keene. Remember how much of a bitch she was?"

"Greta Keene's dead."

"What?"

"She died in 1993. She was eighteen, went to a party, got fucked up on pills and cheap beer, and decided to drive herself home. It was brutal, apparently. Mike said that the whole town went into mourning."

"God, Richie I didn't–"

Richie screamed and gripped his eyes. An ear-tearing shriek roar out from underneath them as the car ripped out of their lane. Eddie grabbed the steering wheel just in time to veer them back in their lane as a semi-truck tore down the highway in the other direction. 

"Jesus Christ!" Eddie said, trying to catch his breath while simultaneously trying to steer from the passenger's seat. Richie made no move to reclaim the wheel. "Richie, what the hell?" 

Richie responded with a horrible mewling sound and easing his foot from the gas. Eddie took over and steered them onto the shoulder. Once he was sure it was safe, he put the car into park. 

"Richie? What–"

Richie removed his quivering hands from his face. His eyes flitted open for just a second. The irises were painfully yellow and the left one was turning red. Tears bubbled in his waterline and fell in hot streams down his cheeks. Richie clutched his hand back over his eyes and a jagged noise pulled from his throat. 

"Richie, Jesus! What happened?" Eddie asked, heart pounding against his ribs. He looked out of the side mirror and saw that they'd left dark skidmarks behind them. Strips of rubber tire lay curled in the street like shriveled earthworms on a summer sidewalk. It'd been close; closer than Eddie was willing to admit to himself. Eddie would have to get out and inspect the damage to the tires at some point, but right now his attention was zoned in on his fiancé. 

"My fucking eyes. Jesus fucking Christ, my  _ eyes."  _ Richie sobbed. 

A shot of fear rang through Eddie's body. He looked at his fiancé and put his hand on his shoulder as gently as he could – afraid that even the addition of his touch would somehow add more pain. 

"What's wrong with them?" Eddie asked in half a voice. His heart hammered in his chest and his blood pulsed hot in his veins. A feeling of innate helplessness overtook him as Richie writhed in his seat. 

"My contacts," Richie spoke in a panicked little gasp. "My fucking contacts are burning."

Richie brought his fingers to his face and forced the lid of his right eye open. Eddie'd seen Richie take his contacts out a million times before. In their coexistent little nighttime routine, Eddie would take his turn at the sink brushing his teeth as Richie removed them next to him at the mirror. This was nothing like all those intimate little moments. No. Richie reached into his eye and pinched the contact. He pulled his hand back, but the thin lens clung to his eyeball and stretched like a string of melted plastic. Richie howled. Finally, the end of the contact attached to Richie's eye snapped away. He flicked it away as though it were burning his finger. 

"You're okay, Richie," Eddie said, although he was sure that he wasn't. Perhaps their days of being okay were numbered. "You're okay," Eddie repeated all the same. 

"The other one's still in," Richie cried. "I can't… I'm going to go fucking blind. I  _ can't." _

Richie's right eye still watered with hot, painful tears. He gripped Eddie's hand and slowly opened his left eye. Impossibly, thick blood was caught between his eye and the melting lens. It was as red as the blazing sky. Richie peered in the rearview mirror and another ragged sob ripped from his throat. Eddie prepared for Richie to curse or scream, but all he could utter was a broken stream of  _ "I can't, I can't, I can't… I'm going to go blind, I'm going to go blind, I'm going to go–" _

"You aren't, Richie. I promise you, you aren't. You can still see out of your right eye, right?"

Richie nodded his head in a harsh jerk.

"Then you'll be able to see out of your left. But you need to get the contact out. Ok?"

Richie tightened his grip on Eddie's hand. And then he let go. Eddie's own eyes teared up in sympathetic pain as Richie extracted the second contact. Blood dripped down his cheek. It had begun.

"You're okay, baby. You're okay." It was all Eddie could say. He drove them the rest of the way.

 

2

 

At the time of the Richie and Eddie's near crash, Bill was high in the sky. He'd gotten a plane ticket right away, but his flight was twice as long as Richie and Eddie's. It was a nice plane. He hadn't been able to get a first class ticket on such short notice, and he was situated nicely in between a large woman and her child. He'd offered to let the kid have the seat next to his mother, but apparently he'd caught them in the middle of some sort of a feud, because both parties refused. The whole flight, the kid listened to his music loud enough for Bill to hear it through the headphones.  _ You'll shoot your ears out, kid,  _ Bill thought. 

"Can you believe him?" the mother turned to him and said. "Always with that rock music. I tell him he's going to be deaf, but he just goes on and makes his music louder!"

Bill wondered when he'd become one of the adults. He purchased his own set of headphones from the flight attendant. He thought about listening to an audiobook, before deciding to play The Cult instead.  _ Just to jog the ol' memory. That's all.  _

The woman looked at him in disgust as he dialed the volume up; the kid gave him a grin.  _ Keep rockin' on. You just gotta keep rockin' on.  _

 

3

 

Ben had spent the night in the Boston Logan International Airport. Unlike Bill, he hadn't been lucky enough to find a flight so quickly. Now, at seven or so in the morning, he was smack dab in the middle of a three-hour layover in LaGuardia. He walked around the concourse, up and down, over and over. Anything to keep the thoughts away. It was starting to come back to him now. It. It.  _ It.  _

He bought some Ibuprofen and choked it down with a bottle of water. He'd given soda up for good, of course. Candy, chips, all that crap they loved to hawk out in airports. He'd gotten oatmeal from the Wolfgang Puck Express near his gate, but he hadn't been able to eat any of it. 

He went to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. There was no one else there. It was strange for such a big airport, but God knew that Ben Hanscom had seen stranger things. 

Ben heard a sound just then. It was the type of sound he so often heard when he was by himself, the type of sound that just a few moments later, you questioned whether it had happened at all because there was no one else around to hear it. The sound of loneliness? No. It was just his phone. An email from work. He ignored it. 

 

4

 

Beverly was hurling from Chicago to Portland at whip-fast speed. She was headed for Portland's Union Station – the train station. On planes, you had all that bad business of security, and the TSA guys were always looking for a reason to pat down her ass. And if Tom were to come after her, the airport would be the first place he'd run to. There was also the fact that she had Tom's gun stolen away in her carry-on. It was really just so much easier to take a train. 

She held her bag tight to her chest as she watched the sun rise out the window.

"I like your haircut," says the girl sitting next to her. The girl must only be about fifteen or sixteen. She had eyeliner messily circling her eyes and a stick-n-poke tattoo of a smiley face on her wrist. It looked infected. 

Beverly ran her hands through her hair. She hadn't had time to catch herself in the mirror – hadn't even gone to the bathroom since escaping Tom. The ends of her chop itch her hand. It wasn't a Sassoon, that much was obvious, but she was big enough in the fashion industry that she could probably make it a thing if she wanted.  _ Eat your heart out Vivienne Westwood.  _

"Are your parents meeting you in Portland?" Bev asked the girl.

"Nah, I'm getting off in Boston."

"You running away?"

"Yep," the girl shamelessly popped her p. 

Beverly looked at the girl and laughed. "Me too."

  
  


5

 

Despite Eddie's promise, all Richie could see out of his left eye was a red blur. They stopped at a Rite Aid near the brand new, half-completed Derry Mall. Eddie'd been unwilling to see whether Center Street Drug was still open quite yet. 

Richie waited in the parking lot. It was clear daylight now, but Richie couldn't really tell. Even his good eye couldn't see much without his contacts. Eddie had packed Richie's backup glasses, just in case. Eddie was the only person these days who got to see Richie in his specs. Usually, it was on the lazy Sunday mornings when Richie didn't bother with the contacts. The image of his fiancé in his geeky, thick-lensed glasses was one that Eddie treasured, but it was one he was more than willing to share with the five other people he loved.

Richie held his glasses in his lap as he waited for Eddie, but he wasn't ready to put them on yet, somehow that'd make it real in a way it just wasn't yet. He'd prepared with Mike in all the ways that they could, but now, he was not only faced with the prospect of the beast, but with childhood. It was this latter thing that scared him more, even as he sat half blind and eyes burning. This innocent thing! But dammit, he was one of the lost boys. Out of them all, he was still the most childish, that was sure. It wasn't such a bad thing. He'd been able to make a career out of telling dirty jokes. He shouldn't be able to explore the bowels of the macroverse, he just didn't have the mental prowess. Hell, if any one of them should have been gifted with the ability to do what he apparently could, it should have been anyone else. Bill, probably. Bill would be better at it.

Eddie tapped on the window.

Richie sat still in his chair as Eddie inspected his eye.

"I think we should take you to a doctor, Rich," Eddie said, looking at all the first-aid things he'd bought, and still feeling short. 

"Nonsense! You're all the doctor I need. Besides, I'm willing to be that any doctor would take one look at me and tell me I'm fine."

"You clearly aren't. Your eye looks really bad."

"To you and me, sure. To anyone who isn't us, I don't think it would look out of the ordinary in any way." 'Us' was understood to include all the rest of the lucky seven. 

Eddie's breath picked up again. He reached for an inhaler that hadn't been there in two years. He panicked at its absence. Suddenly, his asthma seemed once again very real. 

"Hey, hey, hey," Richie said, grabbing his hand. "Breathe."

"Fuck," Eddie whispered.  _ "Fuck." _

"Let save all the fucking for tonight, eh?" Richie tried to joke. It worked. It must've been the absurdity of it all, but it had Eddie rolling in laughter. Richie joined in and for a moment, he forgot about the pain in his eyes altogether. 

Eddie took out a pad of gauze from the shopping bag and flushed Richie's eyes out with saline solution. The right one was looking ok now, but the left was totally fucked. Bloody. It looked like something that should only happen in horror movies – tears of blood. That was enough to convince Eddie that Richie was right. Any doctor would look straight at the mess and not see it at all. Eddie closed the eye with a thin strip of cloth tape and covered it with a square of gauze. Who knew, maybe resting it would help.

Richie put on his glasses and looked in the mirror.

"Holy fuck, I look like the world's lamest pirate," he said, starting into a new bout of laughter. 

"Yeah," Eddie agreed. "You sure do."

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> TW: suicide


End file.
